Pakistan army takes over state-run TV

Published: Wednesday, October 13, 1999

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan {AP} Pakistani troops staged a coup against the democratically elected government Tuesday, seizing state-run media and confining the prime minister to his home in a lightning move that raised tensions in the world's newest nuclear region.

A message that scrolled across the television screen said Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's government had been ousted. It said the powerful army chief, Gen. Pervaiz Musharraf, whom Sharif had fired hours earlier, would address the nation early Wednesday.

Troops cordoned off the prime minister in his residence in Islamabad, took over the houses of several other top ministers and seized other government buildings.

As troops moved through the main cities, many Pakistanis danced in the streets and waved flags, celebrating the ouster of a prime minister who has become increasingly unpopular.

Sharif has been accused of trying to consolidate his power by weakening institutions like the judiciary, provincial governments and the opposition, and of using heavy-handed tactics to quell opposition protests in recent weeks.

Word of the coup led the army of nuclear rival India to go on high alert along the border between the two countries, a senior officer in India's northern command in Kashmir said.

In New Delhi, Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee held a crisis meeting with his top security and foreign policy advisers. The reports from Pakistan "are causing grave concern," said Vajpayee's spokesman, Ashok Tandon.

Tuesday's developments followed

reports in recent weeks of a yawning rift between the military and the civilian government in this impoverished and overwhelmingly Muslim country of 140 million people.

The army has ruled Pakistan for

25 of its 52-year history, and army takeovers have happened repeatedly. But democratically elected governments have been in place since 1985.

The conflict between the two men developed this summer after the

prime minister ordered militants to withdraw from Indian territory in the Kashmir region, ending two months of bitter fighting with India.